THE MOC

A Lesson in Force Design on a Tight Budget from Jackie Fisher

There have been few, historical naval leaders more iconoclastic in their thinking and execution then Admiral Sir John Fisher of the U.K. Royal Navy. Known in the service as “Jackie” or “Jack” (synonymous with that of the average British sailor known as Jack Tar,” Fisher was no ordinary admiral such as were common in the late 19^th and early 29^th century Royal Navy. Fisher commanded at all available levels from paddle wheel frigates to ironclad battleships and finally the Mediterranean Fleet, Britain’s premier 19^th century combat command. He also helped to develop the torpedo as an effective weapon for the Royal Navy through the creation of a separate engineering and testing establishment for the weapon. He spoke and wrote in “colourful” language and is credited by some sources as the first English language user to active mention the acronym “OMG” in written correspondence. Fisher may have entered the Navy “penniless and forlorn” as he put it in his memoir but developed strong connections with British leadership and especially the Royal family. He knew and had stayed with Queen Victoria’s household, was a close friend of her son King Edward VII, and the sovereign’s close advisor Lord Esher. These connections certainly helped to enable his rise, but Fisher achieved high rank on his own arduous work and effort.

Following his seagoing commands Fisher became the Royal Navy’s chief of personnel and support bases as Second Sea Lord, where he promoted a number of reforms including the extension of training of naval cadets from 2 to 4 years in length, and the combination of line and engineering officer specialties into one, integrated naval officer corps. His rising flag officer career was followed with interest by political leaders and in 1904 the First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Selbourne had Fisher appointed as First Sea Lord; the professional leader of the Royal Navy and rough equivalent of the U.S. Navy Chief of Naval Operations CNO.) While Fisher is well known for his second tour as First Sea Lord with First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, and the failed World War 1 Gallipoli campaign, he was also an expert in naval force design and carried out one of the most radical such changes in Royal Navy history from 1904 to 1910.

Fisher’s commission from Lord Selbourne was to reduce Royal Navy budget estimates (costs) and increase the lethality of the fleet. Britain faced the return of peer competitors (Russia, France, and later Germany,) and the rise of new navies like those of Japan and the United States; all of whom threatened Britain’s worldwide naval supremacy. Selbourne’s statement of the situation in 1904 compares closely with the U.S. Navy’s own situation in 2022 where a rising China and a revanchist Russia, along with Iran and North Korea threaten U.S. naval dominance. Selbourne wrote in 1904 in a confidential memo,

“A new and definite stage has been reached in the evolution of the modern steam navy, which has been going on for the last thirty years, and that stage is marked not only by changes in the material of the British Navy itself, but also by changes in the strategic position all over the world arising out of the development of foreign navies.”

Selbourne further noted that the British navy was still deployed across the globe in formations created, “from a period when the electric telegraph did not exist and when wind was the motive power.” To remedy this situation Selbourne had Fisher appointed to carry out a reorganization and force structure update informally known as “the scheme” that had four key points, “(1) We must reconsider our Strategy, (2) We must eliminate out of date vessels, (3) We must re-arrange all of our fleets and squadrons, and (4) We must reduce the number of ships in commission but not the fighting value of the whole.”

Fisher’s application of the scheme came in four parts. He first set out to retire the older and less combat-worthy vessels of the fleet. Those remaining ships were sorted into groups with the most combat-worthy assigned positions closest to Britain’s European rivals, while older and less capable ships patrolled more remote locations. Older ships worth retention for combat missions but not day to day fleet operations were housed in what was called the “nucleus crew fleet” where they were maintained by smaller crews than active-duty ships and required reserve sailors to augment their crews with enough support to go to sea in a combat status. Finally, Fisher sought to build a new force structure for the Royal Navy based on its global strategy. Fisher described his focus on strategy as, “strategy determines tactics and tactics determines armaments.” This phrase would shape Fisher’s efforts for the next decade.

Fisher’s new, more “lethal” force design at lower cost focused on combining classes of ships and the exploitation of existing technology. The legacy force of 1904 was a fleet of heavily armed and armored battleships (designed to fight their counterparts in other navies,) armored cruisers (high speed ships with lighter armor and guns that patrolled Britain’s trade routes,) and a mix of smaller warships down to the size of small river gunboats. The battlecruiser (first called a large, armored cruiser) was Fisher’s combination of the heavy guns of existing battleships and the high speed of the armored cruiser into a ship that could both patrol the trade routes and sink anything it could not outrun. The battlecruisers would be further enhanced with a more accurate gunnery system enabled by a centralized optical gun director that focused all of a ship’s heavy weapons on a single target. Fisher also desired to eliminate the vast number of smaller ships in favor of larger, torpedo-armed, destroyers that would both escort the battlecruisers and provide, along with submarines, for the defense of the British homeland. These changes fit with the overall British strategy of protecting the sea lines of communication (SLOCS) through which flowed the global trade that Britan depended upon for her wealth and communication with her global empire.

Fisher’s system was far from perfect, and many British naval and political leaders rejected his battlecruiser fleet idea in favor of a slower, more heavily armored vessels like Fisher’s prototype, all big gun ship HMS Dreadnought, a vessel that Fisher saw as a step toward the battlecruiser but not an endpoint. Fisher was however able to hold down costs across his tenure as First Sea Lord to 1904 levels through the shift in force structure to Dreadnought class ships and battlecruisers, the nucleus crew concept, and the retirement of older ships (the divest to invest concept.) Overall, the shift to a new force structure, training and basing arrangements begun by Fisher resulted in a Royal Navy that according to naval historian Norman Friedman was the best prepared service to fight in August 1914 compared with all of the armed forces of the Entente and Central powers.

To paraphrase the famous German general Helmuth von Moltke, no strategy and naval force structure survives first contact with a peer opponent war. Fisher’s battlecruisers performed well in opening engagements like the Battle of the Falkland islands, an engagement that perfectly fit their requirements. In later battles however the ships were mishandled by British naval leaders and three were sunk with heavy loss of life at the Battle of Jutland due to poor British ammunition practice that left magazine doors open to achieve higher rates of fire. This combined with unstable British munitions was a recipe for the magazine explosions in all three ships. Submarines became the main threat to British trade necessitating a shift to antisubmarine warfare for the destroyer force. Fisher did not foresee the airplane and specifically the aircraft carrier as a valuable weapon, but he promoted the steam-powered submarine in an early attempt to make a “fleet” submarine capable of sustained operations with combat forces. Unfortunately these “K” class subs were troublesome and never achieved the potential capability sought by Fisher.

As strategist Frank Hoffman asked in 2004, “what can the U.S. navy learn from John Fisher’s Naval Revolution?” In this case, the transformation to take note of was Fisher’s ability to directly plan his new fleet force structure based on the nation’s strategy. If that strategy required a bottom-up review of global force laydown, radical changes in fleet force structure, and new means of personnel recruitment, training and management Fisher was all in favor, and saw to it that the Royal navy followed in his wake, including recalcitrant senior officers. What specific Fisher-like changes should the U.S. Navy examine:

1. Create a global, operational maritime strategy that determines what the fleet designed to carry it out looks like. The U.S. Navy did this in the 1980’s with the Maritime Strategy and six hundred ship navy concepts. The end of the Soviet Union however caused this practice to cease move to regional deployed commanders. The U.S. navy must now reclaim this policy so that the Chief of Naval Operations can create a force design directly connected to the National Defense Strategy and not to intermittent demands from isolated regional commanders.

• Review the current fleet basing plan and conduct a strategic pivot and base the ships where the threat is. Fisher moved his fleet to the locus of the threat and the U.S. navy should use its own strategy to determine where to best base its ships. The U.S. fleet basing structure is not much different from the late 1940’s when the postwar U.S. deployed fleet concept began with the 6^th Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea and 7^th Fleet in the Western Pacific. Given that the U.S. commitment in Southwest Asia (Middle East) seems on the wane, could 5^th Fleet be downgraded back to Commander, Naval Forces Middle East, and in its place raise the 1^st Fleet in the Southwest Pacific (Singapore, Australia,) and Indian Ocean to help counter the growing threat from the Chinese Navy?

• Divest to reinvest in a smart way. Fisher retired over 150 aging ships in his resign of the Royal navy. The U.S. navy in the present also needs to retire ships, at least from full active duty. If done properly, some version of Fisher’s nucleus fleet might be used to preserve aging ships that still have combat potential for future fights when they are most needed. Some ships however will need to be retired regardless of a desire to save them as their maintenance needs outweigh any future employment. The Senior British Naval Constructor (Shipbuilder) of World War 2 Sir Stanley Goodall said after the war that not enough older ships were retired and that the needs of these aging warships prevented him from effectively tending to Britain’s more modern vessels. The U.S. Navy is fundamentally a force that deploys forward, so keeping some ships in lower readiness and out of the deployment cycle for a future fight that might not occur will be seen as wasteful by some, but for some ships like the aging CG-47 class cruisers and older amphibious ships with a specific roles (air defense, troop transport and landing,) the nucleus crew concept might preserve their capabilities at a lower cost then keeping them in the deployment rotation or outright replacing them with new ships.

• Embrace modern technologies and concepts. Fisher accurately noted that the original purpose for building battleships was that only a battleship could carry the weapons needed to sink those of her own kind. The development of the mine and the torpedo changed that calculus and Fisher accepted those changes. The U.S. navy should continue to support the addition of unmanned units as they provide lethality not previously present in just manned units, Fisher was not however a fan of change for change’s sake. Likewise, the U.S. Navy should avoid polemicists claiming that the aircraft carrier and surface ships are completely obsolete and useless. The nation’s maritime strategy should determine what platforms are needed and how they are used to achieve its goals in peace and war.

Admiral Sir John Fisher’s ideas on economical force design ought to be reconsidered by the U.S. Navy as it seeks to field a more lethal force at lower cost. Time is not on the Navy’s side as it seeks to accomplish its new force structure plan and Fisher’s exhortation to be, “Ruthless, relentless and remorseless” in pursuit of one’s goals should be the order of the day.

Dr. Steven Wills is the Navalist at the Center for Maritime Strategy. His research and analysis centers on U.S. Navy strategy and policy, surface warfare programs and platforms, and military history.

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The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.